


Slick

by spacejargon



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Gen, Minor Violence, Suspense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-08-02 07:26:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16300679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacejargon/pseuds/spacejargon
Summary: One cab ride takes a turn for the deeper end of an old cold case.





	Slick

**We’ll win her back.**

No comment follows after the silence that lingers once Venom speaks. As the seconds grow by, his voice grows more insistent. As buildings pass by in the taxi cab they—he and Venom make a strange, content pair—listen to the music filtering into the back seats.

“ _Hey little sister, what have you done?”_

Venom grumbles from the corners of his mind. **I don’t like this guy.**

“ _Hey little sister, who’s the only one?”_

“Not my problem,” Eddie chimes into himself from the back, avoiding the cabbie’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “Deal with it, will you?”

**He’s been eying you like a meal ever since you stepped into this car. I don’t like him.**

‘ _That’s the point,’_ he thinks back, pulling as much weight as he can into the intention of his thoughts. He knows Venom senses danger and has since they stepped into the black car, with the certainty of a cow into a hot metal semi truck barreling toward the abattoir. Life just happens to be cruel.

_Showtime._

“Mr. Reid, was it?” Eddie intones from his spot behind the passenger’s seat, refusing to slide any closer.

“ _Hey little sister, who’s your Superman?”_

The gruff cab driver meets his gaze in the mirror. “Yeah, what’s the matter?”

“ _Hey little sister, who’s the one you want?”_

“Oh, no, it’s nothing,” he lies smoothly, his smile too saccharine and he knows it inside and out. “Just—if you don’t mind, a few questions? I’m composing a piece on cab drivers and fair treatment in this city, and—”

The cab driver taps the breaks a little too roughly when a red light appears as a glowing eye in the dark of night. “Not interested,” he cuts a rough glare, turning his attention back to the streets that pass as soon as he hits the accelerator.

“Well, it’s not too much to ask, I’m thinking, since I get off pretty soon, so I figured maybe I could ask you about your wages or how long your company is making you work?” Eddie leans closer, no pen or paper in his hand. His cell phone is on silent in his back pocket, the taste of iron on his tongue. “I promise I won’t sell you out, man.”

“Is that so?” the cabbie cuts in thickly, his voice saturated with distaste. An accent slips in thickly, though it’s so overdone it’s hard to tell if it’s real or not. His eyes cut to the mirror once more as he pins Eddie down with a single glance, raising a brow. “I don’t care. Keep your business out of mine. I don’t want to cause any trouble.”

“Right,” Eddie leans back in his seat, his legs stretching as little as they can in the confined seat. Billy Idol on the radio seems much too appropriate for the current setting of his latest news story. “Sorry, really,” he mutters as they cut onto a suburban area that comes close to the hotel planned for the night. “Just thought I could get an opinion from you.”

The cabbie nods, a knowing expression cemented onto his face. No cracks lie underneath the smooth, cold expression. “I apologize, but I do not wish for someone with the likes of you interfering with my personal life.”

“No, no, I understand completely,” Eddie sucks in a breath through his teeth, coming to lean forward and sit his chin in his hands where his elbows fold on his thighs. In his lap is a news article printed from online archives, with the portrait of a sour-faced man and a tale ripped straight from a television drama.

Two girls and one mother dead in a sudden snap of cold rage. All traces disappear like the spirits left behind in lukewarm bathwater and empty houses.

“It’s just...you’ve been working here for how long? A couple years?”

Mr. Reid doesn’t meet his eyes anymore. “I’m sorry?” he trills thickly, his eyes hardening in the side mirror where Eddie catches a glimpse.

“Well, y’know, I’m not the only one who’s got a few things to keep from the spotlight.” Eddie cracks his knuckles, one by one, until he can hear a growl in his ears ringing like the toll of church bells at noon. “Like you know I’m Eddie Brock, the ex-famous reporter that used to work some pretty big gigs. Unless if you know another Eddie Brock, since that’s what you called me the moment I stepped into your car.” His eyes flick to the road that passes by, the lines on the street all a blur. The faces they pass mix into the few and far between of night lights and bad neighborhoods. “‘Mr. Brock’ is what you said, but I never told you my name. Guess I must be pretty popular in this side of New York, huh?”

To his credit, he doesn’t immediately stop talking when the first hint of something wrong sizzles on the wrong street to be turning down on. The cab driver completes the turn anyway, his GPS clicked off with a haphazard thumb to the display. No more bland male voice to distract them.

The cabbie’s fingers tighten on the steering wheel, turning a whitish color in the dark. The orange glow of streetlights paints every other second a strange color. “You are quite famous, Mr. Brock. Or, you were,” he offers, his voice a perfect example of neutrality despite the street that stretches before the car, empty except for parked cars on both sides of the road and broken windows puckering up in every couple of houses that pass by.

“Yeah,” Eddie’s eyes return to the window, unseeing. “I used to be someone else. But I’m like you, huh? I used to be someone, but now I’m not.”

He leans closer as the cabbie turns down another wrong road. The map of New York is engraved into his head with the help of another. He knows this isn’t the right street and it isn’t faster than the regular route. There’s no way back to the airport from here that’s any faster than the main roads.

“Except you’re still the same person, aren’t you, Mr. Reid? Under a different name, but still the same kind of guy to murder your own daughters and wife in the family pool.” Eddie raises his eyes to the mirror, meeting none other than his own in another variety. “What brought that on?”

“Mr. Brock, I must ask you to leave,” the cabbie starts with a gruff tone, his fingers latching onto the steering wheel as if hanging on for dear life. The cab, ironically enough, doesn’t stop. “Your accusations would not be favorable toward my employer.”

“So you’re admitting you killed your teenage daughters and their mother in the backyard pool? Or was it the bathtub?” Eddie’s fingers tap on the side of his leg, twitching with adrenaline that starts like a lazy sedative. “I’m not judging, but y’know, that’s not very nice: killing your daughters ‘cause you couldn’t control them, or for whatever reason you chose to beat them to death two years ago.”

**Are you done yet?**

“No.” Mr. Reid’s eyes shoot up as he listens, but never meet his. He’s listening intently, if going by another wrong road he turns down. “Be patient. I’m conducting an interview.”

“ _There’s nothing fair in this world...”_

The music cuts off with thick fingers on the power button to the radio. The car lurches forward in dead silence, save for the conversation lingering on the inside.

“Who are you talking to?”

Eddie rolls his shoulders once, twice, three times. Each pop is louder than the last. “Not you, Mr. Reid. But since you asked so nicely, I have to ask if you had the same reservations when you murdered your family last year. Did they know you were going to leave them face down in the tub and disappear in the night like some caped crusader?”

All pretenses drop as the cab driver’s face changes in his reflection. “You have a mouth on you,” he snarls, taking a left turn onto a street that has no lights but those of the car’s. “Are you aware of what you’re doing, Mr. Brock?”

“Of course,” Eddie chimes in cheerfully, though his smile fades just as quickly as the humor leaves Mr. Reid. It wasn’t there in the first place, but… “Here’s the thing: I know how to play dead. I choose not to, but you just can’t seem to shake off anything that follows after you, huh? When you lie with the dogs, you get the fleas.”

Mr. Reid snorts. “Are you calling me a dog? Hardly an insult for a louse like you, Mr. Brock.”

“Ouch,” Eddie fans a hand against his chest, feigning hurt. His teeth drip with an excess of saliva not by his own doing. “Hey, where are we heading? You know you’ve been going in the wrong direction since I opened my mouth, don’t you?” He thumbs his pocket where his wallet is, perfecting his craft. “Unless if you’re really not that good at being a predator like the press said you were, but just a big coward with the element of surprise.”

The cab rolls to a stuttering halt where no houses remain. The past couple of blocks have been empty and condemned houses, leading far from the epicenter of where any humans loiter about in the long hours of an unforgiving night.

“Why did you come to me?” Mr. Reid’s dark eyes are the equivalent of black holes—they swallow all light surrounding them, taking the last gasps of streetlights and candles burning for vigils of murders left without justice. No amount of prayers and donations would fix the darkness that boils like a swimming mass of sludge. Like oil and tar, bubbling to the surface.

“To get the newest scoop,” Eddie promises with half a breath of a lie and curling his lips with amusement. That isn’t him—it’s Venom, waiting with poisoned fangs as he whispers quietly what to do with the body, with the _witnesses_ that have no feet but haunt the very car they’re riding in to purgatory.

If they go any further, maybe he’ll reach Hell.

All doors click with the lock activating. The engine stalls like a cheap parlor trick, Mr. Reid disappearing in draping shadows. “What are you waiting for, then?”

The click of a gun precedes the slick taste of slime over skin, trailing with the fangs that grow from roots of gore and gum, to the buggy eyes and the dark shine that overtakes something as inhuman as Venom.

The engine cuts with all lights dying, inside and out. Fog whispers outside the taxi cab, screeching and wailing as it barrels against the black paint in thick deluges of swampy air that reeks of decay.

Mr. Reid turns around, following the point of his gun.

Eddie’s lips part to a grisly smile, full of sharp teeth and fangs that know no end.

**"You.”**

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading.


End file.
